"Doble Moral"

Censorship tells the wrong story

Today I was watching the news with Elba during lunch and a segment came on about the terrorists in France. I was surprised when the video showed the police clearly shooting the men down and allowed us as viewers to watch their bodies writhe as they slowly died an on camera death. I told Elba I was absolutely shocked that they didn't censor this, and that in the United States they would have stopped the video long before they did. Elba explained to me the word “doble moral” en español which translates roughly to people who have a double standard or being a hypocrite. She said that in Spain (and Europe) why would the news talk about how the police were going to shoot the terrorists but then cut out the part of the video where they showed the killing. If the citizens and police wanted the men dead then they should be able to see them die. She went on with other examples saying the reason she buys the entire fish (eyes, scales included) is because that way she will know it is fresh, she doesn’t need the fish to come cut up so that she can pretend that is not a fish. Its kind of difficult to translate what she was saying, but she gave lots of examples so hopefully it all makes as much sense in English the way that I’m explaining it to you as it did in Spanish when she explained it to me. In Spain it is incredibly normal for all women to go to the beach topless and no one thinks twice about it, she was surprised how in the US they are always trying to censor the parts of life that our natural: our bodies, that the meat/fish we eat was once a live animal, that people die and that its not a clean and pretty process. Of course this is all just her opinion, but it is something to consider. I had never thought about any of this until she explained it. It made me realize how censoring was so normal for me that I never realized that it was a “doble moral”. The conversation made me wonder what else my eyes would be opened to when discussing problems and situations with people of a different culture than my own.